Team Beck not laughing: Stewart’s act has grown ‘tired’

By David Edwards and Ron Brynaert

Stewart calls out Beck's inconsistent rhetoric about NYC Islamic center; Beck and crew complain it was only "mildly similar in a different context"

"That joke isn't funny anymore," Morrissey once sang for The Smiths. But that's because it hit "too near the bone."

Just a few months ago, Glenn Beck called a Jon Stewart impersonation of himself "hilarious," but on his Tuesday morning radio show, the pundit who used to call himself a "clown" ripped into the Comedy Central host for letting his act grow "tired."

Referring to Monday's Daily Show, Huffington Post's Katla McGlynn blogs that "the best part of the segment was when Stewart caught Glenn Beck in a huge contradiction."

The first clip showed Beck doubting Rauf's "moderate" stance due to statements he made after 9/11 saying America didn't "deserve" the attacks, but that American policies were "accessories to the crime.

"What kind of scheming, America-hating, extremist monster would say something so evil?" Stewart asked, before cutting to a clip of Beck saying LITERALLY the same thing as Rauf, just three months earlier. "What will he think tomorrow?"

Media Matters noted Beck's radio show response:

After playing Stewart's recent skewering of Beck's hypocrisy for attacking Rauf over comments strikingly similar to comments Beck himself made in April, Beck asked, "Does Jon Stewart not understand the difference between that last statement and the statement from the imam that happened two days after 9-11?" Beck gave no indication what actually distinguished Rauf's comments from Beck's, aside from their temporal proximity to September 11, 2001.

And it truly is difficult to find any difference beyond the semantic.

* Beck: "When people said they hate us, well, did we deserve 9-11? No. But were we minding our business? No. Were we in bed with dictators and abandoned our values and principles? Yes. That causes problems."

* Rauf: "I wouldn't say the United States deserved what happened on 9-11, but the United States' policies were an accessory to the crime that happened."

After not explaining the "difference" between his statement and "the statement from the imam" that Beck apparently sill finds appalling, Beck asked, "Does [Stewart] understand that I didn't hire someone to work for me that also went out and made statements like, 'The Jews are responsible," and 'If the - if Americans knew the Jews, they would do what Hitler tried to do to the Jews?'"

Jeremy Holden at Media Matters adds, "Beck's sidekick Stu Burguiere went on to say that Stewart 'has become dull,' and characterized Stewart's criticism as a 'boring, lazy, tired effort.'"

At worst, the statements were "mildly similar in a different context," Team Beck agreed.

This video is from Comedy Central's The Daily Show, broadcast Aug. 16, 2010.

The following audio clip from Beck's radio show is from Media Matters: